Hamster Ride

Hamster Takes Buddy For A Ride - Watch more Funny Videos
Sometimes it's good when you can convince your friend to drive. This is not one of the cases.

Analogy on The Cookie Diet

If you want to make yourself a lot of money, you don't necessarily need a good product or service, just clever enough marketing to trick people. Here is a brilliant analogy on "The Cookie Diet". This may or may not be the case for this diet, but I got a good laugh out of it.

Super Mario Crossover

We all know and love the classic Super Mario Bros. What if you don't like Mario's abilities and would like a gun or a whip. Enter Super Mario Crossover. You can play the game as several of your favorite classic Nintendo characters. I only went through a few levels, but it was an interesting experience playing as Link and Samus.

Piano Stairs

When you come to a place where stairs and escalators are side by side, for some reason its a given to always take the escalators. The stairs are only there just in case the escalator breaks, or so it seems. Here is a video of what happens when you make the stairs fun.

Lost as a Saturday Morning Cartoon

It's probably not really worth its own blog entry because not everyone is a Lost fan, but I found this Lost Saturday Morning Cartoon site interesting. The artist decided to draw pictures of our favorite Lost characters as if they were Saturday morning cartoon characters. Obviously a Lost cartoon would be horrible, but the art is good.

Awkward Family Photos.com

We all have them setting somewhere in our living rooms. They're the awkward family photos. Whether it's of you crying with Santa (or the Easter Bunny), or maybe just something silly the photographer had you do to satisfy a bet, you can always find an album with something awkward in it (some people even post them on facebook). This site (which I also found via the Webby's) features some family photos that I hope are much worse than what you have... if not submit it to them and forever live on the Internet.

Cute Overload.com

I was going through the Webby Award nominations a bit ago and came across a few great sites (I always do when I check them out). One site I found was called "Cute Overload". As you can gather from the title, it's a site that features photos that will make you go "awwwwww". Perhaps I don't link to them enough on here, but there ya go. Enjoy.

Living with a 10 Year Corpse

I read this article about a man who lived with a corpse in his house for 10 years Thursday evening and didn't think too much about it at the time. As I was driving down the road this weekend I was telling my wife about it, and thought "why didn't this go onto my blog", so here it is. This story makes me sad for several reasons. First of all, the dude lost his room mate and didn't seem all that upset about it. Another thing is, didn't anyone wonder "Hey what happened to that Dennis dude, maybe we should go check on him" (especially family members). There are many more, but to finish out, the guy dies and the best thing you can do to hide the body is hid him under the couch cushions.... and it worked.

SysAdmin Confession: "I hate computers"

I came across this article the other day and found it interesting. It's called "I Hate Computers: Confession of a SysAdmin". The concept is just as it seems. It's an article by a system administrator who has turned against computers. As an IT person, I can completely see where he is coming from and agree with a lot of what he says, but I take the end user approach; I see computers as a means to an end. As with any job, your satisfaction depends on your employer and situations.
*Note: I usually don't post links to articles that contain "bad language" but I felt this was a well written article and the language used wasn't offensive nor did it detract from the story.

Best Accordion Video You'll See All Day

I'll go out on a limb and say this is the best accordion video you'll see all week. This kid really rocks the accordion. It's not very common for someone to decide they'll become master of such an instrument, but it's certainly nice when they do.

119 Ways to Organize Your Cat

I found this link a few weeks ago, but at the time it wasn't working well due to being popularized. It is 119 ways to Organize Your Cat. Pretty much, it's a bunch of pictures of cats stuffed into stuff. If you like that sort of thing, you'll love this, if not, it's still something to scroll through really quickly. Speaking of that, what's the deal with the Internet and cat pictures?

Goofy Movie In Real Life

I remember really enjoying the "Goofy Movie" when it was first released in theaters. Here is one of the first scenes of the movie made with real actors instead of animation. As the video states, this was done with very limited resources, but it turned out really well.

Juggling Gymnast Flips

Here is a video I taped during our cruise last week. They had a show just about every night, and this was one of the best. This guy was an Olympic gymnast and gold medalist who now does shows on cruises. After the video stopped, the crowd went crazy because what he did was pretty amazing. Then he said "This trick works so well because the ball has velcro on it. Otherwise it launches about 30 feet into the audience."

I've not Forsaken My Blog... Took a Cruise

Just to let you know that I've not forsaken this blog... well, actually last week I did, but for a good reason; I was on vacation with no Internet access. I typically don't blog about my personal life because it's really not all that exciting, but tonight I'll take a few moments to let you know what I was doing last week while I wasn't blogging and beg forgiveness from my regular readers.

My wife and I decided to try out taking a cruise. I've always been a little questionable about taking one, and finally decided we may as well. We were not celebrating anything in particular, but my wife works around 80ish hours per week so she was due in for a break. Since we wanted to say taking a cruise is something we've done, and if the experience was bad, it wouldn't ruin a special occasion, we gave it a whirl. Turns out it was a rather good experience. Here's how it went

*I'll take this time to tell you, this looks like it could be a long blog entry and I'm gonna ramble; You've been warned.

*Edit- I was correct, I rambled. Only continue reading if you want to know what I did on my vacation.

After some research we decided to go with Royal Caribbean sailing out of San Juan, Puerto Rico and destined for the Southern Caribbean for 7 nights. The ship we were on was called "Adventure of the Seas" and was one of the biggest cruise ships (if not the biggest) when it was built in 2001. I've heard the ships are big, but really had no idea how big until I was on it. It's like being in a giant floating building.

The first full day and night there was an "at sea" day. There was no stop, you just hang out on the boat. Immediately you may think it sounds boring, but there was so much to do on the ship that it's kind of hard to get bored. A few examples of things we saw/did while on the boat include a comedian, a gold medal gymnast performing, an ice skating rink, a rock climbing wall, a mini-golf course, basketball court, several pools/hot tubs, musical shows, dancing, casino, a shopping mall, and much more. It's a little overwhelming at first and takes a while for you to realize how much you can take advantage of while you're wondering around on a boat.

*I'll stop here to say, they did have Internet for purchase while on board, but I'm cheap, and I was on vacation.

Another thing I had heard about the cruise was how much food they gave you. I love food, and must say they did an excellent job making sure I could eat whatever I could imagine (and I can imagine a lot). I'll not bore you any longer with talk of food except to say, it was more than plentiful (granted I could tell you how we got room service one night, ate, then went to supper and ate again, but I won't).

The port experiences themselves are a combination of the local area, and what you decide to do with them. Our ports we went to were Bridgetown, Barbados; St. Lucia; Antigua; St. Martin; and St. Croix. I can think of no other way to illustrate what we did and how it effect our experience, other than explaining a little of what we did in each location.

Bridgetown, Barbados- I had always heard great things about Barbados, so I was super excited to go there. My wife and I decided to not book a tour and go directly into the city to see what we could see. I must say, it is one of the sketchiest places I've been. I'm sure the rest of the island of Barbados is OK, but Bridgetown was one of those places I wanted to get out of as soon as we arrived. It seemed as though around every corner someone was aggressively approaching us trying to peddle money out of us. We looked around about an hour, then headed back to the boat and played mini-golf. I will add a lot of the people we talked to who decided to go into Bridgetown felt the same way we did, others who booked tours and such seemed to love Barbados. Swing and a miss and chalked the first day up to experience.

St. Lucia- This was our favorite port and best experience of the entire trip. She did some research on forums and such and found a great tour to book online through a guy named Spencer Ambrose. He and some of his brothers do daily tours of the island, and a great job. We ended up getting Spencer's brother named Small. He took us around the island stopping often and buying us different foods (coconut, grain, bananas, as well as a nice lunch). He gave us a full tour of the island and we ended up hanging out on a beach between the two peaks of the Piton mountains. I will add that it was pretty much a private tour that was my wife, me, and another couple. It was a very nice day...

Antigua-Antigua is known for it's great beaches, so I was really looking forward to seeing the island. We booked through the boat's tour (avoid doing this if you ever take a cruise, you'll spend more and have huge crowds). The island did indeed have lovely beaches, but our tour, although it claimed to have time on the beach, didn't stop there for very long. The day wasn't bad, but it could have been much much better had we known a little more.

St. Martin-This is what I had expected from a Caribbean island. It had beautiful beaches, and was very clean. The island was known for it's great shopping and the fact that it has two sides a French and a Dutch. We walked off the boat, hired a taxi to take us around both sides of the island on a tour, and concluded with checking out their local shops.

St. Croix- This island was a bit weird. It is one of the Virgin Islands of the US and is very US. As you go down the road, you could very easily mistake it for a city in Florida or South TX, or California. While we were there we booked another excursion my wife found in an online forum where we snorkeled around Buck Island (a place JFK made a national monument). We were taken out to the island on a sailboat, which was a bit slow, but it was a sail boat, and watching people work sails is entertaining. The snorkeling was interesting, but the water was a bit choppy and I came close to getting bashed against some coral a few times. After the snorkel, the tour guides took us to a beach they had squatted and fed us grilled burgers, hot dogs, and Mahi. If something fell from the grill, it was fed to the mongoose (mongeese, mongaggle, however it is pluaralized) hanging around. This was our last day of islands, and a fairly good way to end the vacation.

***Side note- I will take this moment to say. On each island we went to, the Spanish had felt the need to introduce mongoose to the land as a solution to various problems. Their plans always seemed to backfire on them, and the mongoose would cause more problems than they solved.

I will conclude this ridiculously long and rambling blog entry by saying that I was wrong. A cruise isn't bad, but a great way to see a whole lot into a vacation. You go to sleep, wake up in another paradise-like island where an adventure awaits. When you get back to the ship, your every need is tended to, and whether you want to relax or party (or both) it's there for you. This wasn't the best vacation we've ever taken, but it was a very good one.

13 Great Billboards

You gotta love it when advertisers go above and beyond to make their ads worth looking at. Whether it's online ads, commercials, or even billboards, some ads are just good. Here is a link to 13 billboards that are extraordinary. Although some of these do a great job, I'm still not sure you'll remember the product as much as you do the billboard.

The Pinnochio Paradox

I came across this picture a bit ago and found it an interesting concept. It's called the Pinocchio Paradox. If Pinocchio says his nose will grow, what does that mean. In the image (if you click it, it should zoom in), it goes on to explain the paradox and some time travel issues that go along with it. Fun for every geek to enjoy.

Giant Wasp Video

This is a beast of a wasp found in Japan. The guy goes through explaining the basic anatomy of the bug and how it is Japan's most deadly animal. I don't like small wasps, much less one of these.

Starry Night Crunch

I'm not sure what the story behind this is, but here is a link to a video of Van Gogh's Starry Night made out of cereal on what appears to be a gym floor. This is a great project, but begs the question... "What do you do with all that left over cereal". Maybe it was old cereal that was ready to be thrown out anyway.

Star Wars Sound Effects Quiz

If you're a Star Wars geek (like me), you probably have a hard time guessing how many times you've seen the shows. With that said, how well do you know your sound effects? Here is a nice little Star Wars Sound Effects Quiz. I was a little disappointed that I only got 70% on it, but some of them are a bit obscure and from the "newer" movies.

Tiger Ballet

Who says just because you get a minor role in a ballet that you can't still be the star. The tiger in this video really steals the show here. He starts out quiet enough, but by the end, the show is all his.

Making Peep Sushi

With yesterday being Easter, you've probably ended up with ample amounts of Peeps. They're fun for a while, but there's only so much eating of sugary birds you can have fun with. Here is a way to spice them up a little bit by making Peep Sushi (Peepshi). Other than it being a bit morbid (cutting the bird's heads off and such), it may be a fun way to make a snack with your kids.

Video Game Health Care Bill

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

With all the talk of the Healthcare Bill, Video Game Bosses are getting in on some of the action. A friend posted this on Facebook yesterday so I thought I'd share it as well.

Internet April Fools

I'll come right out and say it. I hate this April tomfoolery. The Internet makes it worse. Every website out there seems to have to take part in it somehow, no matter how bad. I'll give credit where credit is due, some of the pranks I do like, I just don't like it when sites decide to turn into "The Onion" for a day. One especially that I enjoy every year is the ThinkGeek specials. They are one of the first sites I go to every April 1. Another good one is what XKCD did today by implementing a command line interface into their site. For some others, here is a CNN link to the more popular web April Fool's day jokes.